Senseless Character Behavior - Lazy Writing?

[KBA]

I would need the main character to also be confounded, and to know he or she is confounded by their actions. Otherwise, as a reader, I'd think I'd missed something or that my reading comprehension was becoming demented.

 

[Mythical Traveller]

I would need the main character to also be confounded, and to know he or she is confounded by their actions. Otherwise, as a reader, I'd think I'd missed something or that my reading comprehension was becoming demented.

As your characters begin to understand the reasons (they don't have to be "good" reasons), then so will the reader.

Well, that's just the thing, I don't think my characters will understand the reasons; I think it will be a case of the deeper they explore these people the less and less they can make sense of them. Every answer raises more significant questions. The dynamic I envisage is basically starting off with a rather innocuous encounter where on first encounter, the people don't look outwardly odd, so there are assumptions that there is common ground between the protagonists and them. However the more they get to know these people, the more it becomes apparent that the commonality is only skin deep, and this foreign cult is essentially an eldritch abomination that are the same race as the protagonists in body only - not in mind.

Having the cult eventually make sense to the reader is another issue that I wonder about. I can't see my main characters ever really understanding these people, so if my readers are eventually able to make sense of them, will that spoil the sense of connection between my readers and the heroes?

Is it better to have my reader right by the heroes' sides in trying to navigate this struggle, even to the point where they share their confusion? Or is it better for the reader to have the comfort of understanding everything that is going on?

 

[SeverinR]

In life, almost everything we do, has a reason. Even if we don't understand it or even make the connection.
Even the obsessive compulsive has a reason to touch the door handle 12 times before turning the knob.

If a community does something, it is usually set up by tradition, superstition, or spiritual beliefs. Even if the tradition is founded in lunacy, it can continue because at a very young age the children are exposed to it and everyone is dedicated to that tradition, no matter how crazy it might seem to outsiders.

Since we don't know the specifics, we can't comment directly. If you think it is so strange, then you might need to establish the reason for the action.

The Hunger Games, the lottery is pretty crazy and devastating to the communities. I don't think this major point of the story could be ignored as to why they do it, without knowing how it started and why it continued. The removal of a child to be most likely killed is not something most communities would stand for. Personally, I still don't believe most communities would have stood for it as long as they did in the story. The best and brightest or even the sweet little child who hasn't even reached puberty going to face young adults twice their size is accepting a lamb to slaughter from the community for the amusement of the elite district. It is a good story though, because the lottery is explained and the people are severely restricted. (Enslaved with the very minimal to survive.)

Some things you might not need an explanation, some things you will. We can't comment directly without knowing the specifics though.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

If I were reading your story, I would expect consistency from it. If you have a cult member act one way and another cult member act counter to that, as a reader I'd expect to be told the reason for the inconsistency, so that at least that much made sense to me. But I wouldn't need to be told every detail about why the cult behaves as it does.

Otoh, if something the cult practices is illogical to the extreme, I'd be curious as to why. Without some explanation, I'd be tempted to stop reading. Whether I continued to read would depend in part on how logical the non-cult characters behaved. If everyone in the book were illogical without explanation, I'd probably put the book down. But if you demonstrated strong logic with the non-cult characters, the contrast might keep me reading.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

If the erratically acting cult members were just a detail of the story, I wouldn't need explanation. It would be cool and creepy.

But if you were using their erratic behavior to solve plot problems, it would seem like you were using them as a crutch. I'd want an explanation.

 

[skip.knox]

If a major element of your story never makes sense, then your story will literally be nonsense. Is there some powerful reason why you want to write nonsense?

Don't get me wrong; some literary fiction explores exactly that. But it did not sound like that's what you're going for. Which still leaves me wondering why you are so insistent on having nonsense at the core of the story. What's the payoff? Where does it lead?

 

[Gurkhal]

I am wrestling with a particular aspect of my story right now - a community that plays quite an important role. The thing about this community is that much of their behavior is utterly mystifying. And the significance of this concerns me because some of this nonsensical behavior is key to shaping how the story plays out. I can't help but worry if this will leave a sour taste in the readers' mouths; if it will come across as poor writing, having characters doing things for no coherent reason, seemingly only because the writer needs them to do those things.

I am not talking about a community of lunatics, either. Lunacy offers a writer a great deal of leeway to explain away the nonsensical actions of a rogue character or two.

No, these people live as they do with (seemingly) stable minds. But what they do confounds my main characters and, presumably, will confound the audience, too. And perhaps what troubles me most about it is that even I don't really understand why these people do what they do. As the author - the creator of this world, do I have a duty to understand why my characters are what they are, why they do what they do? Especially when the plot hinges upon their unconventional character? Or is "just because..." good enough?

My fear is that having a nonsensical element play such a major role will turn the story into something that leaves the readers going "WTF did I just read?" I know that there's a niche for abstract storytelling, but I personally have never cared for it. I like to leave a story feeling like I've understood what I've just read/watched.

I would say like this. If the behavior at the start don't make sense that's no problem. But at the end of the story there should either be an explination for their behavior or we should know the, perhaps magical, rules that they obey.

So it might be an idea to simply decided what the end revelation in regards to this community should be, work from there, and then unravel, so to speak, the mystery from an opposite direction, starting by the end and working your way to the start.

 

[Mythical Traveller]

If a major element of your story never makes sense, then your story will literally be nonsense. Is there some powerful reason why you want to write nonsense?

Don't get me wrong; some literary fiction explores exactly that. But it did not sound like that's what you're going for. Which still leaves me wondering why you are so insistent on having nonsense at the core of the story. What's the payoff? Where does it lead?

Well no, it's not really meant to be nonsense. It's meant to be about being confronted with nonsense. It's the tale of that struggle to escape a situation where absolute confusion has gone beyond novelty and become distressing. It's about trying to vanquish a foe that defies understanding and defies conventional battle tactics.

Something I don't know if I've mentioned is that this cult is, in broad terms, a rather totalitarian regime. And even amongst people they don't directly govern, they are still a toxic presence in the world that affect many other city-states negatively.

The payoff come when those they've oppressed have been freed and when their toxicity is contained so that other city-states are no longer affected by it. Eradicating the cult is not feasible (to put it simply), so the story relies on the heroes finding a way to contain their adversity.